You need to watch this.

If you support Bush, you need to watch this. If you hate Bush, you need to watch this.

If you support any Presidential candidate other than Ron Paul, you need to watch this. If you support Ron Paul, you need to watch this.

If you’re a Republican, you need to watch this. If you’re a Democrat, you need to watch this. If you’re a Libertarian, you need to watch this. If you’re a Green, you need to watch this. If you’re an Independent, you need to watch this.

If you’re an American with a heart beating in your chest, you need to watch this.

You just need to watch this.

Shameful. Just shameful.

At a time when other states, including our neighbor South Carolina, are resisting the anti-American, anti-freedom REAL ID Act, North Carolina is actually bragging about being among the first to comply with it. Phillip Rhodes blogs about it here:

[T]here is no doubt that North Carolina and it’s people have a long history of embracing Freedom and Liberty as core values. Now however, we see that corruption and decay have reduced this once proud state to a level where state official are *bragging* about their compliance with a totalitarian National ID law passed by the Federal government in 2005.

He’s right. And to think, this is the state that was the first to stand up to the British oppression with the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence on 20 May 1775 (and even if you dispute that, there’s the Mecklenburg Resolves 11 days later), the Tryon Declaration on 14 August (I’m directly descended from one of the signers), and the Halifax Resolves on 12 April the following year. Also, our main delegate to Congress, Joseph Hewes, was one of the biggest driving forces behind the push for independence, despite his inaccurate portrayal in the otherwise excellent 1776.

We’ve been sinking into Socialism for a good number of years now. With REAL ID, we go into Communism and “papers, please.” It’s high time we woke up, remembered our legacy and heritage, and did something about it.

It looks like Congress is going to act to restore habeas corpus. The fact that I even had to write that sentence would make our founders, had they the ability, moan so loudly from beyond the grave it would shatter every window in the country. How much worse is it that some Republicans say they’ll vote against restoring it? Without habeas corpus, you have no other rights.

Here’s a very good news report explaining why:

I just had to share this entry from the Downsize DC blog:

Picture this: A Mexican migrant worker sits down to read the new 700+ page Senate immigration bill.

He doesn’t know a lick of English, but he’s giving it a go anyway. He wants to obey the law, so he has to know the difference between a Z-visa and an a, b, c, d or whatever visa.

Can’t imagine it happening? Well how about this . . .

This Mexican worker earns a whopping $15 a week working in Mexico, but he really does want to obey the law, so he spends a month’s salary for a lawyer to tell him how to work in the U.S. legally.

Still can’t picture it? Well how about this . . .

The Mexican just ignores the whole thing and walks across the border.

This last scenario makes the Mexican look pretty smart, and Congress, and huge chunks of the American public, pretty stupid.

Can we really expect a Mexican to read and understand our laws, when not even Congress does?

And see, that’s the problem: it’s easy to get here illegally, and too difficult to get here legally. They come here illegally because it’s easier to swim the Rio Grande than it is to climb the mountain of bureaucracy.

This new immigration law will expand federal control over law abiding U.S. citizens.

Businesses that comply with this law will feel the heavy hand of the state as they strive to do background checks on every person they hire. Law abiding businesses will suffer, while those that participate in the black market for cheap labor will thrive.

Law abiding workers will also suffer. You will be subject to background checks, but those working in the black market will not.

All prohibition schemes of all types share several crucial features. They all ignore the law of supply and demand. And they all succeed in punishing only a few of the guilty, while making all of the innocent suffer from the negative consequences that flow from a black market.

The truth is that this so-called immigration reform is really about the REAL ID Act. The electronic verification aspects of this bill (which is just code for the REAL ID Act), are the only parts of this bill that will have any real impact. And the impact will be on YOU, the legal worker, or you, the legal business operator.

And that’s the big problem. Government whips up all this anti-immigration fervor–by complaining about a problem it caused–and uses it to take away your rights.

It’s high time we all woke up.

New Hampshire Public Radio interviewed Ron Paul today for almost an hour. Listen to it, and I think you’ll see why I think he’s so awesome.

Ron Paul gives Rudy Giuliani a “summer reading list.” Brilliant! If Giuliani doesn’t understand “blowback,” he has no business being President.

And despite the fact that his name “barely makes a blip in the early polling,” his Alexa web rankings are higher than that of the three so-called “front-runners,” in reach, rank, and page views. Go, Ron, go!

First of all, Fox News obviously stacked the audience and had biased moderators. They should have said, “We ask you to hold your applause, unless a candidate says something we agree with.” They also talked one-on-one with Giuliani after the debates so he could take more shots at Ron Paul, without giving Paul a chance to respond.

“Fair and balanced”…yeah, right!

Folks, Ron Paul is exactly right. If you go messing with a hornet’s nest, you’re going to get stung. Press members from different sources have actually gone over there and interviewed people, asking what their beef with the US is. Not a single one of them mention our wealth and freedom, as Giuliani and the neo-cons so desperately cling to. They all talk about our foreign policy, and our troops over there in their country.

Paul was 100% correct: How would we feel if China came and did the same thing to us? Giuliani completely avoided answering that. He kept saying that he couldn’t believe another Republican was saying we “had it coming.”

Look at it this way: if there’s a criminal gang, really nasty people, ready to resort to violence, and you run over there and start poking them with a stick, and then run away, they might very well chase you down and kill you. Would it be murder for them to do so? Absolutely. Should they be tried and imprisoned for their actions? Absolutely! Were you completely and utterly stupid for poking them with a stick in the first place? Absolutely!!!

All of the rhetoric that came out of the other Republicans was straight out of the cold war propaganda I grew up with; just do a search-and-replace and change “communist” to “terrorist.” It’s the same story, the same propaganda, the same lies.

If Republicans have even an ounce of integrity left, they’ll ditch the propaganda, the pandering, the jingoism, and the lies, and support Ron Paul 100%.

And the Democrats and Libertarians would do well to do the same.

EDIT: You can watch the relevant bit of video from the debate here.

EDIT AGAIN: I see on YouTube they did talk briefly with Paul afterwards. They just didn’t put that video up on their site. You can watch it here.

They were also perplexed by Ron Paul leading and then placing second in their poll. Hannity and the others were trying to spin, spin, spin, saying that the 30% of the 40,000 people who voted were the few Paul supporters just getting the word out. Yeah, that’s right, the very few 12,000 people who voted for Paul…basic math, anyone? Hey, Hannity, you ever thought that maybe, just maybe, not very many people agree with you? Watch them try to figure out some reason other than Paul being right and his message resonating with people here.

One more bit of news: Lots of Republican Party high-fliers are circulating petitions to try and ban Ron Paul from future debates. Put it all together, and they’re not acting like people who are dealing with a nutcase who doesn’t know what he’s talking about; they’re acting like people scared to death that there’s actually someone exposing their propaganda for what it is.

RON PAUL IN 2008!